In Ruins
by tore-my-yellow-dress
Summary: "I forgive you."


She's not sure, upon later recollection, if it was the sound of the knock or the pulse beneath her bruised wrist that woke her.

Still, she knows it's the resonance of rapping on wood that creeps like winter's bone through her apartment, and she knows it's him because she knows what hope is. It turns cloyingly sweet on her tongue.

The expression heart in throat comes to mind, but so does the tremble in her fingers, not dissimilar to the leaves that flit to treacherous winds. She'd fallen asleep on the couch after she'd taken her medication, and when she stands her legs are lead. She nearly stumbles.

She doesn't.

Instead, those quaking fingers clutch at her shawl, pull it tight around her body to keep the hunger of ignorance at bay, to quell the knots in her stomach and maybe the heaviness beneath her eyelids. It is the burning of tears that have no right that make her chin rise and her chest puff. It is her pride that shrivels and falls at her feet. Olivia Pope is so tired.

The chill metal of the doorknob makes her hand jerk.

Olivia does peer through the peephole.

The bruises on her wrist attest to the fact that Jake Ballard will not be returning. Ever. The Secret Service would dare not startle her awake this late. This is how she tells herself that hope is a yellow bird in her window. The reality is that atoms of inexplicable matter attract. The reality is she would know him if she was blind and deaf, if merely from the way his knock on the wood resonates like the pulse of a bomb in the dark.

"Love is patient," she hears her mother say.

Her mother has been dead for twenty years.

Olivia Pope opens her door.

Here is the reality:

When two violins are placed in a room, if the chord on one violin is struck, the other will sound the note.

It goes a little like this.

The agents are not in the immediate vicinity, but that does not matter. It strikes her blunt and unforgiving that the entire world could watch her fall apart, and it would resort to the finest string of this. It would all come down to this man. Her every cell _aches _with the wonder that is his eyes. Blue, oh she's missed how blue they are. With the hard line of his mouth and the nature of his stature, he stands like a soldier.

"Hi," he murmurs, because they will always be them.

It is the only absolute.

Her mouth forms the word, twists it and chokes it out, strangling what little sanity she possesses. Giving it to him.

"Hi."

Lover meets lover, returning from draft.

Olivia steps aside and studies her floor, the indentations in the tile, allowing Fitz inside her home. He's collecting his words. He _always _has the perfect words, whereas she falls flat, but no- _no, no, no- _not anymore. Never again will she let him believe-

He stops just inside, squaring off his feet and mouth gaping with too many sentiments she cannot accept. She's been such a fool, hanging on broken ledges and picking up shards of glass as if that _matters _and-

"I forgive you," Olivia tells him, and even though her voice parts down the middle and her lips are wobbling there is a confrontation in the way her breath stutters.

And she does, that's the thing. _She does. She had it wrong. She was wrong. _She forgives him for every night that she lay in bed, every wasted tear, every vicious word that still rubs her raw if she recalls the exact way he had formed the syllable- but she forgives him because-

"I love you," she tells him, and he's opening and closing his mouth and his eyes are so _blue _but, no, she has to-

"I'm in love with you," she tells him. "I forgive you for-

He's walking forwards, hesitating each step as if she's an animal that might snarl, but the words won't stop flowing, a dam that's sustained too many cracks and-

When he takes her face in his hands, swallows her cheeks with his palms, tilts her head up, she promptly falls apart.

Fitz does not kiss her.

She tastes salt when he wraps her arms around her and pulls, and she doesn't realize she's crying beyond the thick scent that she's missed, oh God she's missed him, the material of his jacket pressed up against her hot cheek. His grip is tangled in her hair._ She's missed him. _

It feels like she hasn't seen him since before, since those fleeting stolen moments after the terrible bullets and the screaming and the eulogies. Since he'd pulled her aside and told her to _wait. _Feebly, she recognizes that the crown of her head is dampened by tears that are not her own.

Olivia Pope cannot live without Fitzgerald Grant.

This she knows. This is what is the building and the breaking.

This is what makes her pull back and inhale like a dying woman, makes her eyes red and his eyes red, this is what makes her say,

"I am sorry. Fitz, I'm sorry."

Then, then he brings his mouth down to stop just short of her own.

Olivia breathes out. He breathes in.

They are so close, yearning and want and love. And love.

Oh, love.

"Don't be."

He kisses her open mouthed, but there is no roughness to be noted. There is simply feeling, drowning, she's so far gone she can barely see the surface anymore. Dragging under and blue lips. He is wary of her wrists, so she knows he knows, but he backs her up against the wall and moves her against the drywall until she straightens up, clinging to his form and kissing his jaw before taking his large hand in her petite grip.

She leads him to the bedroom because she _can. _

"Fitz," she cries out when in one fell swoop he reaches down pick her up, legs hoisted around his waist, too much fabric and friction.

He nips at her carotid and lays her down flat on her back. Her hair fans out behind her head, and it's tender and perfect, the way he just holds there for a moment, risen up on his palms over her. The kiss with wanton teeth and nary a care, and they do it because nothing in the world can compare. Their clothes go quick.

Nothing is rushed, but they spell desperate with the unhinge of buttons and the way she stops to kiss the puckered scar of a sniper rifle, yes, there is nothing torrid about it. Instead it is being to being, holding souls that have been through the wringer and offering sweet kisses that will echo a tattoo of "_You are not a whore. You are not a whore."_

They settle for back to chest. He holds her against him and slips his fingers between her legs, caressing her until she's grasping his wrist, moving her head and arching into him. "Fitz, please."

He concedes, but he never stops mouthing three words into her shoulder blade. Fitz enters her slowly, with every ounce of control he can muster, and it strikes him, as she's keening out just from that feeling, that this is coming home. He's home.

She moves her legs to accommodate the angle and reaches up to hold his hands where he has them around her midsection, moaning softly when he begins thrusting slowly. There is no rush.

Nothing is a rush.

He's deep, deep enough that her knuckles are white and her lips bit fresh and swollen, so achingly deep that when he reaches down to suck on the juncture of her neck she falls fast, falls apart even more, and she wonders for the umpteenth time how there's anything left in her to give.

Olivia tosses her head back sharp enough that he goes with her, gripping her hip and burying his face in her skin. Her mouth is open, his eyes clenched shut, and it is everything and more and this, this is lover meeting lover, returning from draft. This is the precipice of home.

This is the foundation they build when they begin anew.


End file.
